Oklahoma football: Sooners’ go early, but their NFL Draft over after round three

Three Oklahoma football players were off the NFL draft board after pick No. 53 in the second round, but there would only be one more Sooner taken in the next 202 selections in this year’s draft.

Four Oklahoma draft picks may not seem like many for an elite program like OU — and is a far cry from the 14 from LSU who were selected in this year’s draft — but a quartet of draft selections is an average year for the Sooners, who are the only college team that has delivered at least four players in the NFL Draft for 13 consecutive years.

Two Oklahoma players — WR CeeDee Lamb at No. 17 (Dallas) and LB Kenneth Murray, No. 23 (Los Angeles Chargers via a trade from New England) — were selected in the first round of the draft for the second consecutive year. The streak of a Sooner going No, 1 overall in each of the last two years, however, ended when the Cincinnati Bengals selected LSU quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow with this year’s No. 1 pick.

Seventeen Oklahoma Sooners have been drafted in the opening round in the last 20 years, and a Sooner has gone in the first round in 11 of the last 20 drafts.

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After round one, all eyes among Sooner fans were on Jalen Hurts and where the adopted OU quarterback and 2019 Heisman runner-up would go in the draft. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell read off 20 names in round two before he announced matter-of-factly, “with the 53rd pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, the Philadelphia Eagles select Jalen Hurts, quarterback from Oklahoma.”

Having four or more players selected in the draft has been standard issue for Oklahoma for more than a dozen years, but having no Sooner drafted later than round three is not. Not since the 2004 draft have no Oklahoma players been drafted in rounds four through seven. In 2004, the Sooners scored a trifecta in the draft, with DT Tommie Harris going in the first round (14th overall to the Chicago Bears), LB Teddy Lehman selected in the second (37th overall to the Detroit Lions) and CB Derrick Strait in the third (with the 76th overall pick, to the New York Jets).

While it was virtual high fives all around for the families and fans of CeeDee Lamb, Kenneth Murray, Jalen Hurts and Neville Gallimore, the lottery winners from Oklahoma in the 2020 NFL Draft, the same cannot be said for several other Sooners who were hopeful of being among the 255 selections in the 85th anniversary year of the NFL Draft.

Notable OU players were shut out of the 2020 draft were CB Parnell Motley, and WRs Nick Basquine and Lee Morris. That does not necessarily lock them out of a potential NFL career. They may now sign on to any of the 32 NFL teams as a free agent, which will give them another pathway to make an NFL roster.

As far as how Big 12 teams performed in the draft, Oklahoma and Baylor, both with four selections apiece, finished second to TCU, which had five players taken in this year’s NFL Draft.